


The Persistence of Memory

by zakhad



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25231960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zakhad/pseuds/zakhad
Summary: As if the world needed another Ezri fix-it fic.I always felt that the series did a poor job with Ezri. No guarantee I will do better, but I can try.
Relationships: Ezri Dax & Benjamin Sisko
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

_How is it that, being gone, you fill my days,_   
_And all the long nights are made glad by thee?_   
_No loneliness is this, nor misery,_   
_But great content that these should be the ways_   
_Whereby the Fancy, dreaming as she strays,_   
_Makes bright and present what she would would be._   
_And who shall say if the reality_   
_Is not with dreams so pregnant. For delays_   
_And hindrances may bar the wished-for end;_   
_A thousand misconceptions may prevent_   
_Our souls from coming near enough to blend;_   
_Let me but think we have the same intent,_   
_That each one needs to call the other, "friend!"_   
_It may be vain illusion. I'm content._

_Mirage, Amy Lowell_

* * *

It would be so nice to sleep alone again. I keep waking up wrapped up in my sheet, the whispers of all the incarnations of Dax fluttering around in my head. 

_Our head._

Nightmares, or just dreaming of memories I never had before, keep me waking up multiple times every night since the surgery. I hear the names I'd never heard before many times a night, being spoken by family I never had.... _Tobin. Lela. Torias. Joran. Curzon. Emony. Audrid. Jadzia._

Especially Jadzia. I guess the most recent host is the loudest? 

I never wanted to be Joined. This is not what I signed up for! It's been two days and I can hardly walk, all these thoughts and urges swimming around in my head make me so dizzy. And it's worse if memories of Jadzia's zhian'tara come floating up. That happened randomly when I was eating lunch earlier today, and I felt like my head would spin off my shoulders. Memories of memories? 

I'm trying to read some of the materials that the initiates are given, to prepare them for Joining. They keep laughing at me -- why don't I just think about it? They all studied hard to be approved by the Symbiosis Commission. Curzon seems to understand, so does Jadzia. I want to do something for Ezri.

No, I'm Ezri. I want to study. I want to understand what's happened to me. 

How am I supposed to know if I can even trust any of the voices in my head? Maybe I'm just hallucinating them! Maybe something about the Joining is causing me mental health symptoms? People have to prepare for this for _years_! What if I just go mad, and they have to remove the symbiont.... They tell me once Joined, the host will die if the symbiont is removed. Did I give my life to save Dax?

There's this voice in my head named Joran, who says they've taken Dax from someone before....

I'm starting to wonder if any of this is even real. Surely they wouldn't kill someone.

I started this journal to sort myself out. I'm not sure it's helping. But I've encouraged clients to journal so many times, I'd be a hypocrite if I gave up just because it isn't working yet. 

"I want to be me," I say to the reflection in the mirror. I look like Ezri. I sound like Ezri. 

I feel like nine different people, all at once, and then there's Dax, the source and the reason for all the confusion. I feel young, and old. So very old. I know the exhaustion is because I can't sleep, mostly, but there's also this sense that I'm much older than I am....

I was eighteen when I ran to the Academy, to find myself. I was twenty when I was assigned to the _Destiny_ as an assistant counselor. And now I'm also more than three hundred years old. I don't even know who to talk to. I can't think of any similar case of a symbiont being placed in an unprepared host -- and all nine of us concur, that's not something that happens. Except on a Starfleet vessel where most of the crew are humans with good intentions. The symbiont had been in crisis, the doctor declared that a live host would give Dax a higher probability of survival -- what was I supposed to do? I had no time to really think about what it meant. No time to second guess.

I want to be grounded! Not this jangled, messed-up version of myself plus eight. I can't think of a single person I'd trust to help me through this, and that includes a number of fellow counselors. 

I just wrote that, and Jadzia provided the answer. Curzon agrees. Ben would help me. I need to find Ben.

When I tried to reach him via subspace, the computer returns an automated message informing me he's on leave, to contact Deep Space Nine to speak to the interim commander in charge if I'm calling on Starfleet business. I think about that a little more. He doesn't take leave without good reason.

Did my death affect him that much?

 _Jadzia's death_.

Of course it would affect him. He'd told me -- _told Jadzia_ \-- about how Curzon's had affected him. How his wife's death had changed him. Jadzia wasn't a wife or a lover, but they were close friends. Because she was _Dax_. Of all of Dax's friends, Benjamin was the most accepting and understanding. He'd already been with Dax through one host change.

I decide then that I needed to find him, leave or no leave. 

Audrid murmurs sometimes about this problem. She was the head of the Symbiosis Commission, and she's quite disapproving of the situation. But she's long ago and far away, by comparison, and Jadzia always leaped in with both feet, as the humans say. And I'm much closer to being Jadzia at the moment than anyone else.

I needed to relearn object constancy. I needed an anchor. In so many stressful situations, Ben had been sounding board and support -- he would do it again for me, I knew. Dax knew, Jadzia knew, Curzon knew. Ezri was afraid.

I was afraid. I am afraid. I don't know Ben Sisko. I've heard of him, sure, he's one of the famous ones -- an inspiration to every young ensign. The Emissary of the Bajoran prophets.

That deep felt-sense of knowing him flicked on and off as I thought about him -- the things I read about him as Ezri, then _swish_ I remembered sitting at a bar drinking and laughing with my good friend Ben. Being at his wedding, and meeting his son Jake after he was born. I tried to think about other things, other people -- faces of friends long dead floated up until I couldn't stand it.

Ben was alive. He welcomed Jadzia with open arms. He would welcome Ezri -- Curzon and Jadzia agree on this, and it was the most reassuring of the possibilities. I hadn't even spoken of the deep confusion and overwhelming feelings I'd been spinning through; the novice counselor that Ezri is knows already, inpatient treatment would be her suggestion. Or returning to Trill, and there was consensus in the back of my mind that I would be studied and treated like the unicorn I was. No preparation for Joining, and I'd been gifted the Dax symbiont by a freak of chance. There were those, Curzon and Torias and Joran agreed, who would believe I had somehow manipulated the situation to be in a position where I would be the only option.

My quarters on the _Destiny_ felt confining. I'd been taken off duty, and I didn't see how I could possibly return at all the way I was. I needed to find Ben, that was the sum of all the chattering opinions in my head, and so I asked for a leave of absence from Starfleet then for a stop at a starbase to drop me off, so I could find my way back to Earth. Ben had gone there after Jennifer's death to re-evaluate and recover. That was the most likely place to find him -- at his father's restaurant.

At the thought of his father, I remembered the taste of gumbo. I'd never heard of gumbo before but now I knew what it tasted like.

My stomach flipped and flopped.

This was too much -- I sent the requests to the captain of the _Destiny_ and went to lie flat on my back, close my eyes, and try not to focus on the nausea. Or the gumbo, or the last wife I had, or the last husband....

I don't even wonder what Jadzia would think of me. I know. Ezri Tigan had nothing in common with Jadzia. Nothing at all. When I let her memories play, which I did at first out of curiosity, I remember her confidence, her joy for life -- Joining had only increased her taste for adventure and love of a good party -- and I know that had I known her before, had I been her same-age peer? I would have felt threatened by her. I was the bookworm, the quiet one, not the type to enjoy big groups of people or have adventures. She would have pitied me, perhaps attempted to drag me out of my shell.

Jadzia had had a full life. Good friends. Lovers of many species. A love of science, and the drive to pursue whatever she set her mind to do. And she'd married a _Klingon._

I can't imagine being _friends_ with a Klingon, let alone lovers. 

There's no way I'll ever live up to her legacy.

But -- and all of them agree, these past hosts of Dax that sometimes talk all at once, I could tell immediately without really spending any time thinking it over -- I shouldn't feel pressure to live up to any of them. I didn't have to be at all like any of those very different people, I was Ezri Dax. I was not a gymnast, or a scientist, or a skilled diplomat, nor was I a musician or the head of the Symbiosis Commission. Nor do I have to be. 

I was, however, very sure that the people from Jadzia's life wouldn't necessarily think that way. But I knew Ben would be instrumental -- even if I returned to the _Destiny_ and didn't just resign from Starfleet due to being a complete basket case, I wanted to see my old friend whom I'd never met.

It's going to be quite a journey. I hope I can figure out all the verb tenses and remember what gender I am along the way.

I need to find a way to reconcile, absorb, or at least make peace with all these memories that feel like other people in my head. I need to find out who Ezri Dax is, now, because one thing is clear -- Ezri Tigan is gone and won't be back. 


	2. Chapter 2

It's been a while since I journaled - what a lousy client I'd make. Never doing what helps.

I finally felt grounded, in the restaurant when I saw Ben. For a while anyway. I got my first chance to talk to him on the way to Tyree. He seemed distracted though, not what I remembered, exactly.

Oh, that describes so many things. I'm going through this more and more. Like memories from different hosts superimpose, so when I sit down at a console it takes a few minutes to remember what all the controls are for. So many versions of so many vessels over the centuries. And people do change, and I wonder if part of the distance between us is Jadzia's death. I kept telling myself not to worry that Ben won't be resentful or judgemental of me. Now I'm questioning that too.

"It's been rough," I start out as we sit down in the tiny mess hall of the runabout. The others are up front, giving us a little space. Already I'm thinking every time they look at me with those questions in their eyes I must be deficient, in comparison to the great Jadzia Dax.

"I can imagine. I remember Curzon talking about all the potential hosts he mentored over the years, how they struggled to prepare," Ben said as he turned from the replicator with two cups. Watching him sit down was both familiar and comforting, and completely disorienting -- Ezri still didn't know him. Jadzia felt very attached to him, loved him with an uncomplicated devotion that Ezri hadn't ever felt for anyone before.

This new person that I am, Ezri Dax -- how is it that I sit here in between the two and feel at odds and yet completely at home?

Ben paused in raising his coffee cup and cocked his head. "You all right, Old Man?"

"No," I replied honestly. "There's nothing about any of this that's all right."

He scowled a little at that and finally took a sip. "You want to talk about that?"

On the one hand, I do. On the other... I don't know if the whole truth will just alienate the one friend I feel like I have left.

"What do you mean?" he asked. Telling me that once again, I had intended to think, and spoken instead.

"I mean that it's confusing to be this way -- I had no intention of ever being Joined," I said, feeling my face get hot. "I can't even tell whether I'm thinking or speaking sometimes. I have to sit thinking for a while to figure out if what I'm saying is coming from Jadzia, or Audrid, or Joran, or Curzon. I have six different opinions about something at a time. Curzon and Jadzia thought talking to you is a good idea, Ezri wasn't sure. I wasn't trained for this. I'm not sleeping all that well, because sometimes I have these conversations in my head for hours about what to do next. My first few hours in sickbay after the symbiont was implanted were -- "

There wasn't a word for how incoherent and crazy I likely sounded. The babbling in my head had spewed forth at least in part through my mouth. The doctor had finally sedated me.

Ben thought about that while gazing into his cup, sipping a little more, tapping on the table gently. "Have you thought about going to Trill? Spending a little time training -- this hasn't happened before, of course, it's unusual. But maybe that would help."

Immediately the clamor starts again in my head. I've already had this opinion floated by Curzon, rejected by Jadzia, who had a tendency to disagree with Curzon. I recognized that I'd started shaking my head only when I noticed Ben's frown. "I'm not sure they have much to offer me. I've been reading some of the materials, and Jadzia has a lot to say about it."

"So correct me if I'm wrong," Ben said carefully in that measured way he has when he thinks there's a chance I'll -- or no, that was Curzon -- get upset with him. Wait... no, he did that with Jadzia too. "But it sounds like you could use a counselor?"

I started to laugh, and that made him laugh too. "At least I can laugh about it now," I said at last, shaking my head.

"When you showed up at the restaurant I was happy to see you, but it did make me wonder why me," he said. Ben leaned forward, his forearms crossed on the edge of the table.

"I missed you," I said, then realized how ridiculous that sounded. "I mean... I remember what a good friend you were to Jadzia and Curzon. I mean, I have _their memories_ and so I know -- you know what I mean," I finished lamely.

"I do know," Ben said with his warm smile, his dark eyes alight with amusement. "Do you remember Jadzia's _zhian'tara_?"

Memories of multiple _zhian'tara_ sprang up at the mention of the word. "Sort of," I said, my hand going to my stomach, which started to flip and flop. Of course, that might have been space sickness. I returned to the conversation and did my best not to think about that, because it would only make it worse. "I'm having this problem, where thinking about one thing they all have in common invokes all of the memories. It kind of gives me a headache. Takes a bit to untangle everything. You were Joran, weren't you?"

"It was an interesting experience." Ben wasn't smiling thinking about it.

"They're all in here and I can't control any of it," I blurted. Waving my hands at my own head vaguely. "Without warning I hear one of them saying something I didn't intend to say. I can't be a good counselor until I'm positive Joran or Lela or Torias won't suddenly pop up in the middle of a session."

Ben was frowning again. "I had the distinct impression that the previous hosts weren't accessible. That's the whole point of a _zhian'tara_ was it not? To access and integrate memories that weren't otherwise accessible."

I can feel my face as I wince -- my stomach lurches again. Jadzia is distressed, Curzon is concerned, other thoughts flit through from the others. "Maybe that's how it's supposed to be. It's what the training materials say it's supposed to be."

Ben's lips thinned as he digests this. He's disapproving. "So why, again, are you here, and not on the way to Trill? The people who are going to be best at figuring this out with you are on Trill?"

How do I tell Ben how afraid I am that they'll just take the symbiont to pass it along to a more deserving host and leave me to die?

"Maybe I'll do that," I replied with a sly little smile I borrowed from Jadzia. "After I help you with whatever we're doing on Tyree."

He gave me a look that suggested he wasn't sure that was true. But a call from the bridge drew us back to the matter at hand, and gave me a reprieve from explaining how crazy I was.

More and more, it feels like Ezri is losing the fight. I keep putting forth the confidence Jadzia had. She was so good at that. Starfleet training, and centuries of joined existence in so many walks of life, and Curzon's bravado overlapping hers -- Ezri doesn't stand a chance.

I remember being okay. Being myself, the little sister, overshadowed by older brothers with a need to prove themselves in the eyes of a strong-willed mother running the family business on New Sydney. Being a Starfleet cadet overshadowed by louder, more assertive cadets striving to be starship captains. Finding my place with the other would-be counselors, and with clients -- so much easier to be heard when you're trying to help someone, rather than compete with them. And my meek existence now has eight other contexts to compare it to -- the early years of some of them were full of accomplishments and accolades. 

Jadzia and some of the others are sympathetic. Some of them know the way inferiority eats at you.

I hope this gets better soon.


End file.
